THE 1960 CAMPAIGN -- AND NOW

UNKNOWN to the American people, the Bay of Pigs invasion plan played a crucial role in the 1960 presidential campaign.

Despite the fact that millions of persons watched the four televised debates between Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy, the voters went to the polls without knowing the secret reasons for the public positions the candidates took on Cuba. Behind the scenes, on both sides, there was deep concern over the pending CIA invasion.

To understand the secret drama that unfolded inside the Nixon and Kennedy camps in 1960 over the planned invasion, one must go back to a tradition that began in 1944.

In that year, wartime intelligence reports were made available to Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican presidential candidate, by President Roosevelt. Mr. Dewey received similar information in 1948. In 1957. President Truman made CIA data available to General Eisenhower and to Adlai Stevenson.

In 1956, following what by now had become an established custom, Eisenhower arranged CIA briefings for Stevenson. And in 1960 Eisenhower sent identical telegrams on July 18 to Kennedy and to Senator Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, offering them,

"periodic briefings on the international scene from a responsible official in the Central Intelligence Agency ... Because of the secret character of the information that would be furnished you," said Eisenhower "it would be exclusively for your personal knowledge."

Kennedy and Johnson accepted Eisenhower's offer. On July 23 Allen Dulles, then Director of Central Intelligence flew to Hyannis with two aides, James Brooke and Gate Lloyd. The CIA men arrived in an Aero Commander that had the markings of a private plane. Brooke and Lloyd carried secret papers in two slim dispatch cases.

In a two-and-a-half-hour conversation at Senator Kennedy's summer home, on the brick terrace overlooking Nantucket Sound, Dulles briefed the Democratic presidential candidate on what Kennedy described afterward to reporters as "a good many serious problems around the world." Kennedy said these had been discussed "in detail' and indicated particular emphasis had been placed on Cuba and Africa.

On July 27 Dulles flew to the LBJ Ranch in Texas and remained overnight to brief Johnson. Dulles briefed Kennedy once more during the campaign, on September 19.

A few days after this second briefing, in a reply published on September 23 to a series of questions from the Scripps Howard newspapers, Kennedy said:

"The forces fighting for freedom in exile and in the mountains of Cuba should be sustained and assisted ..." [2]

Then, on October 6, in Cincinnati, Kennedy delivered his major speech on Cuba.

"Hopefully," he said, "events may once again bring us an opportunity to bring our influence strongly to bear on behalf of the cause of freedom in Cuba." Meantime, he called for "encouraging those liberty-loving Cubans who are leading the resistance to Castro." [3]

These sentiments were making the Nixon camp increasingly edgy. Nixon and his aides did not know exactly how much, if anything, Kennedy knew about the invasion plan. They did not know if Dulles had told him about it. They certainly did not want the Democratic candidate to be able to claim credit for an invasion that might be launched by a Republican President. It was President Eisenhower, after all, who had ordered the CIA to arm and train the exiles in May of 1960. Nixon and his advisers wanted the CIA invasion to take place before the voters went to the polls on November 8.

A top Nixon campaign adviser later privately confirmed this. He explained that Nixon was hoping for an invasion before the election because "it would have been a cinch to win" the presidency if the Eisenhower Administration -- in which Nixon was the Number 2 man -- had destroyed Castro in the closing days of the campaign.

The best documentation of this is an article by Herbert G. Klein, press secretary to Vice-President Nixon during the 1960 campaign. On March 25, 1962, writing in the San Diego Union, of which he was the editor, Klein revealed what had been going on behind the scenes in the Nixon camp in 1960. It was a candid and most interesting news story that did not gain the wide national attention it merited:

"From the start of the 1960 campaign many of us were convinced that Cuba could be the deciding issue in a close election. Certainly, in retrospect, it was one of the decisive factors in what was the closest presidential election of modern history ...

"Only four of us on the Nixon staff shared the secret that refugees were being trained for an eventual assault on Castro and a return to Cuba. We had stern instructions not to talk about this, and, despite many temptations, we protected security by remaining silent.

"For a long time, as we campaigned across the country, we held the hope that the training would go rapidly enough to permit the beach landing. The defeat of Castro would have been a powerful factor for Richard Nixon ...

"But the training didn't go rapidly enough for a pre-election landing ..."

Klein also wrote that a pre-election Cuban invasion would have made it possible to reveal during the campaign that Nixon had written a confidential memo in 1959, analyzing Castro as "either incredibly naive about Communism or under Communist discipline." *1 Klein added that Nixon had urged a tough policy on Cuba "which led to the training of refugees."

While the Nixon people were hoping the invasion would take place any day, that was exactly what the Kennedy strategists hoped would not happen. They were receiving persistent, and disturbing, reports that some kind of Cuban exile operation was in the works. The reports of invasion training were picked up from several sources, including alert members of the press.

In mid-October, Andrew St. George and Hank Walker went to Florida to shoot pictures for Life magazine of Cuban exiles training to invade their homeland. The Kennedy campaign staff heard about this assignment. While in Miami, St. George received several telephone calls from William Attwood, a member of Kennedy's speech-writing staff. *2

Attwood was calling St. George for information on the state of training of the Cuban exiles. According to St. George, Attwood expressed concern that the Republicans would try to launch an invasion of Cuba before election day. St. George said the question, apparently, in the mind of the Kennedy aide was not whether there was to be an invasion, but when.

St. George told Attwood that there seemed little possibility of an immediate invasion, judging by the state of readiness of the exiles. This word was passed on to Robert Kennedy, who was managing his brother's campaign. At one point, there had been discussion among Kennedy strategists of the possibility of the candidate's giving a speech anticipating the invasion that seemed to be brewing, and thereby neutralizing its political effect. The idea of a formal speech was dropped, however, when investigation showed there was little possibility that an invasion could be launched before election day.

However, the Cuban issue was not dropped completely. On October 20 the Kennedy and Nixon campaign trails crossed in New York City, where both were preparing for their fourth and final televised debate the following night. That afternoon, newsmen accompanying the Democratic candidate were alerted for an important statement by Kennedy. The release was delayed, and when mimeographed copies finally arrived at the pressroom in the Biltmore Hotel, it was after 6:00 P.M. On the very last page these key words appeared:

"We must attempt to strengthen the non-Batista democratic anti-Castro forces in exile, and in Cuba itself, who offer eventual hope of overthrowing Castro. Thus far these fighters for freedom have had virtually no support from our government." [4]

At the Waldorf-Astoria, eight blocks away, the effect on Nixon was immediate and explosive.

A year and a half later, in his book Six Crises, Nixon wrote that when he read Kennedy's Biltmore statement, "I got mad." Nixon went on to say that the "covert training of Cuban exiles" by the CIA was due "in substantial part at least, to my efforts," and, that this "had been adopted as a policy as a result of my direct support." Now, Nixon felt, Kennedy was trying to pre-empt a policy which the Vice-President claimed as his own.

Nixon wrote that he ordered Fred Seaton, Interior Secretary and a Nixon campaign adviser, "to call the White House at once on the security line and find out whether or not Dulles had briefed Kennedy on the fact that for months the CIA had not only been supporting and assisting but actually training Cuban exiles for the eventual purpose of supporting an invasion of Cuba itself.

"Seaton reported back to me in half an hour. His answer: Kennedy had been briefed on this operation."

Kennedy, Nixon continued, was advocating,

"what was already the policy of the American government -- covertly -- and Kennedy had been so informed ... Kennedy was endangering the security of the whole operation ...

"There was only one thing I could do. The covert operation had to be protected at all costs. I must not even suggest by implication that the United States was rendering aid to rebel forces in and out of Cuba. In fact, I must go to the other extreme: I must attack the Kennedy proposal to provide such aid as wrong and irresponsible because it would violate our treaty commitments." [5]

The next night, during their fourth debate from the ABC TV studio in Manhattan, Nixon hopped on the Kennedy proposal as "dangerously irresponsible." He said it would violate "five treaties" between the United States and Latin America as well as the Charter of the United Nations.

The Nixon camp was elated. All the next day, as the Republican candidate barnstormed through eastern Pennsylvania, members of the Nixon staff let it be known that they felt Kennedy had finally made a serious error.

That night, October 27, in the crowded gymnasium at Muhlenberg College in Allentown; Nixon attacked:

"He [Kennedy) called for -- and get this -- the U. S. Government to support a revolution in Cuba, and I say that this is the most shockingly reckless proposal ever made in our history by a presidential candidate during a campaign -- and I'll tell you why ... he comes up, as I pointed up, with the fantastic recommendation that the U. S. Government shall directly aid the anti-Castro forces both in and out of Cuba ...

"You know what this would mean? We would violate right off the bat five treaties with the American States, including the Treaty of Bogota of 1948. We would also violate our solemn commitments to the United Nations ..." [6]

Kennedy was campaigning in Missouri and Kansas that day. By the time he reached Wisconsin the next day, he was feeling the heat of the Nixon attack.

In North Carolina, Adlai Stevenson, campaigning for Kennedy, was alarmed at Kennedy's stand on Cuba. Stevenson had spoken at Duke University on October 21, and now he was at his sister's plantation in Southern Pines, North Carolina. He placed a long-distance call to Kennedy in Wisconsin. When he got through, Stevenson warned that the statement urging aid to the exiles could develop into a political trap for Kennedy if he were elected. He expressed strong opposition, and urged the Democratic standard-bearer to back off slightly from his New York statement.

In their conversation, Kennedy seemed embarrassed about the statement and implied it had been issued without adequate clearance. He told Stevenson he would pull back from it, and regain a safer position. Accordingly, Kennedy dispatched a telegram to Nixon that day in which he said he had "never advocated and I do not now advocate intervention in Cuba in violation of our treaty obligations." And he said no more about aiding Cuban exiles.

Three days later, the October 31 issue of Life appeared with St. George's and Walker's pictures of Cuban exiles in training.

The campaign was now rushing to a climax. On November 2 Kennedy had his last CIA briefing, this time from General Cabell, rather than from Dulles. Kennedy had requested this briefing in order to be brought up to date on any last-minute international developments.

The CIA deputy director flew to Los Angeles and talked with the candidate aboard the Caroline, Kennedy's Convair, during a flight from Los Angeles to San Diego. The two men were alone in the rear compartment of the plane. Cabell left Kennedy at San Diego.

In March of 1962, when Nixon charged in his book that Kennedy had been briefed about the Cuban invasion and had deliberately endangered its security, the White House issued an immediate denial, which was backed up by Allen Dulles. Pierre Salinger said Kennedy "was not told before the election of 1960 of the training of troops outside of Cuba or of any plans for 'supporting an invasion of Cuba.'" Nixon's account was based on a "misunderstanding," Salinger said. Dulles' campaign briefings had been general in nature, he added. He said Kennedy was first informed of the Cuban operation when Dulles and Bissell came to see him in Palm Beach on November 18, 1960, ten days after the election.*3

Dulles, too, attributed Nixon's version to,

"an honest misunderstanding ... My briefings were intelligence briefings on the world situation," he said. "They did not cover our own government's plans or programs for action, overt or covert." [7]

And in fact, Nixon did not explain how Seaton, by telephoning the White House, had learned what had transpired between Kennedy and Dulles. He did not say to whom his adviser had talked. Seaton has declined to shed any further light on this.

"It was an appropriate White House official, a man who would be in a position to get the answer," was all that he would say. "It certainly was not the White House janitor." [8]

In fact, Seaton talked to Brigadier General Andrew J. Goodpaster, the White House staff secretary and President Eisenhower's link with the CIA. But there is no indication that Goodpaster checked with Dulles, or that Nixon or Seaton ever checked with Dulles directly.

Exactly what transpired during Dulles' briefings of Kennedy -- the nuances, the inflections, Dulles' precise words when the question of Cuba arose -- these will never be known for certain, since the meeting was top-secret and unrecorded. The same applies to General Cabell's briefing aboard the Caroline November 2.

But there is some evidence that Kennedy did not want to be told about operational matters -- such as the Cuban invasion -- because of the very fact that this might limit his freedom of action.

In any event, Nixon's dispute with Kennedy and Dulles over who told what to whom missed the point. Regardless of the content of the CIA briefings, the Kennedy camp had learned informally from other sources that an exile invasion was hatching.

The candidates for President of the United States were allowing their campaign strategy and public positions to be influenced by a secret operation of the Invisible Government.

 

(All three major issues debated in the closing days of the 1960 campaign were related to clandestine operations. First, there was Cuba. Second, there was the issue of Quemoy and Matsu. Third, the question of whether President Eisenhower should have "apologized" to Khrushchev after the U-2 flight of Francis Gary Powers in order to save the Paris summit meeting.)

The point is that as a by-product of operations of the Invisible Government the electoral process -- the very heart of democratic government -- was being confused and diluted.

In the case of the Cuban invasion, both candidates were concerned about a secret plan of which the electorate knew nothing. In choosing the man to fill the most powerful elective office in the world, the voters were basing their decision, in part, on misleading statements.

As has been noted, one candidate, Vice-President Nixon, confessed considerably later that he took a false public position during the campaign, exactly the opposite of his true feeling, in order, he said, to protect the CIA invasion plan.

But the minions who watched Nixon and Kennedy argue the Cuban issue on television had no way of knowing that the facts were being distorted or suppressed.

This is not to suggest that the invasion plan should have been announced on nationwide television. But it does seem reasonable to ask how the voter can make an informed choice when a candidate is not telling the truth, for whatever laudable patriotic motivation.

Those who argue against tighter controls over the secret branches of the government are fond of making the case that the American system already has enough built-in safeguards. The people elect a President and place their faith in him. During his term in the White House, he is free to run the government, including its secret machinery, as he sees fit. But if the voters dislike how he is running the country, they can turn him out of office in four years. For during every presidential election campaign, the great issues are debated, there is a full public accounting and the people can look, listen and make their intelligent choice.

So the argument goes. What happens to this theory, however, when the electoral process becomes so enmeshed in the tentacles of the Invisible Government that a candidate tells the voters he stands for one course of action, when he really believes just the opposite? Obviously, the electoral process itself is fundamentally weakened. That is what happened in 1960, and there is no reason to think it could not happen again.

When the public positions of candidates for President are shaped (or reversed) by secret operations which the voters are not entitled to know about, something has happened to the American system, and something for ill.

The Invisible Government participated in the presidential campaign of 1960. It was unseen, but there. It provided a valuable lesson for future presidential campaigns.


*1
In April, 1959, after a long meeting with Castro in his office in the Capitol, Nixon drafted a confidential memo for the White House, the CIA and the State Department. Key excerpts said: "As I have already indicated, he was incredibly naive with regard to the Communist threat and appeared to have no fear whatever that the Communists might eventually come to power in Cuba ...

"My own appraisal of him as a man is somewhat mixed. The one fact we can be sure of is that he has those indefinable qualities which make him a leader of men. Whatever we may think of him he is going to be a great factor in the development of Cuba and very possibly in Latin American affairs generally. He seems to be sincere, he is either incredibly naive about Communism or under Communist discipline -- my guess is the former and as I have already implied, his ideas as to how to run a government or an economy are less developed than those of almost any world figure I have met in fifty countries. But because he has the power to lead to which I have referred we have no choice but at least to try to orient him in the right direction."

*2 After the election, Attwood was named Ambassador to Guinea, and in February, 1964, he became Ambassador to Kenya.

*3 Immediately after the election, Dulles went to Eisenhower and urged that the full details of the Cuban invasion plan be laid before the President-elect. Eisenhower authorized Dulles to do so, and the CIA chief, with Bissell, flew to Palm Beach for the November 18 meeting.

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A CONCLUSION

THE PRIMARY CONCERN of the men who drafted the Declaration of Independence was the consent of the governed. By the mid-twentieth century, under the pressures of the Cold War, the primary concern of the nation's leaders had become the survival of the governed.

The Invisible Government emerged in the aftermath of World War II as one of the instruments designed to insure national survival. But because it was hidden, because it operated outside of the normal Constitutional checks and balances, it posed a potential threat to the very system it was designed to protect.

President Truman created the nucleus of the Invisible Government when he signed the National Security Act of 1947, giving birth to the CIA. He has asserted that he conceived of the CIA primarily as a coordinating and intelligence-gathering aid to a modern President who needed concise, centralized information on which to base national policy. But by 1963 the intelligence apparatus had taken on dimensions which Truman said he had never anticipated.

"With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda ... in their name-calling assault on the West," he wrote, "the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people...

"There are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I ... would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and whatever else it can properly perform in that special field -- and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.

"We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it." [1]

In effect, Truman was lamenting the damage to national prestige caused by such special operations as the U-2 affair of 1960, the Bay of Pigs, and the episodes in Indonesia, Burma, Laos, Vietnam and elsewhere.

Yet the Plans Division, which conducts the CIA's special operations, was established in 1951 under President Truman. And it was under Truman that Allen Dulles came to Washington to be the first director of that division. Since Truman could not have been unaware of these events, the real question is whether the operational activities of the CIA have grown to a size and shape that Truman had not intended when he signed the 1947 Act.

Has the dagger, in short, become more important than the cloak? Certainly, in the years since 1951, secret operations have grown greatly in size and number. When they have gone awry -- and some have gone sensationally awry -- they have brought notoriety to the CIA.

Nevertheless, CIA officials have insisted that the majority of these operations have been successful. However, there have been a large number of known failures. There is only one logical conclusion, if one is to accept the CIA's claim to a high percentage of success: that the total number of secret operations has been much greater than is supposed even in knowledgeable circles.

As in the case of the Bay of Pigs, some of these operations have become so big that they cannot be practicably concealed or plausibly denied. In other instances, clandestine activity has turned loose forces which have proved uncontrollable. Around the world, the CIA has trained and supported elite corps designed to maintain internal security in pro-Western countries. But these police units have sometimes become a source of acute embarrassment to the United States, notably in Vietnam, where CIA-financed special forces raided the Buddhist pagodas.

Despite these wide-ranging clandestine activities, and despite the importance, the power and the vast sums at the disposal of the CIA and the other agencies of the Invisible Government, there has not been enough intelligent public discussion of the role of this secret machinery.

In general, critics of the CIA have been hobbled by a lack of sure knowledge about its activities. By and large, their criticism falls into three categories: that the CIA conducts foreign policy on its own, that it runs its affairs outside of presidential and Congressional control, and that it warps intelligence to justify its special operations.

There is a sophisticated notion that the problems raised by a hidden bureaucracy operating within a free society can be resolved by limiting the CIA to intelligence gathering and setting up a separate organization to conduct special operations. The argument is that when the two functions are joined, as they are now, the intelligence gatherers inevitably become special pleaders for the operations in which they are engaged.

There is little question that this has happened in the past and that it poses a continuing, basic problem. But the difficulty is that an agent who is running a secret operation often is in the best position to gather secret information. A CIA man involved in intrigues with the political opposition in a given country will very likely know much more about that opposition than an analyst at Langley or even the ambassador on the scene.

If the CIA were to be prohibited from carrying out secret operational activity and that task were to be turned over to another agency, it might be necessary to create another set of secret operatives in addition to the large number of CIA men already at work overseas. Such a situation would probably reduce efficiency, raise costs and increase the dangers of exposure. The Taylor committee grappled with the problem after the Bay of Pigs and came to the conclusion that the present arrangement is the lesser of two evils.

This problem, as important and complex as it may be, is secondary to the larger question of whether the CIA sets its own policy, outside of presidential control. While this accusation contains some truth, it, too, is oversimplified.

There are procedures which call for the approval of any major special operation at a high level in the executive branch of the government. The public comments of Eisenhower on Guatemala and Kennedy on the Bay of Pigs demonstrated that they not only approved these operations, but took part in the planning for them.

However, many important decisions appear to have been delegated to the Special Group, a small and shadowy directorate nowhere specifically provided for by law. But because the Special Group is composed of men with heavy responsibilities in other areas, it obviously can give no more than general approval and guidance to a course of action. The CIA and the other agencies of the Invisible Government are free to shape events in the field. They can influence policy and chart their own course within the flexible framework laid down by Washington.

In Costa Rica, for example, CIA officers did not see fit to inform the State Department when they planted a fake Communist document in a local newspaper. In Cairo, "Mr. X" slipped in to see Nasser ahead of the State Department's special emissary. In the Bay of Pigs planning, the CIA men selected the political leadership of the Cuban exiles.

Yet because of the existence of the Special Group and a generalized mechanism for approving operations, intelligence men have been able to claim that they have never acted outside of policy set at the highest level of the government. In short, even when a clear policy has been established, a President may find it difficult to enforce. Presidential power, despite the popular conception of it, is diffuse and limited. The various departments and agencies under his authority have entrenched sources of strength. They cannot always be molded to his will.

In his relations with the Invisible Government, the President's problems are compounded. He cannot deal with it openly and publicly. He cannot bring to bear against it the normal political tools at his disposal. He cannot go over the heads of the leaders of the Intelligence community and appeal to the people.

A President operates under a constant awareness of the capacity of disgruntled members of the Invisible Government to undercut his purposes by leaking information to Congress and the press. During the deliberations leading to the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy obviously realized the political dangers of canceling a plan to overthrow Castro which had been brought to an advanced stage by a Republican administration. Similarly, during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, White House officials suspected that someone high in the CIA was attempting to undermine the President by providing the Republicans with information.

This suspicion reflected the fact that the Invisible Government has achieved a quasi-independent status and a power of its own. Under these conditions, and given the necessity for secret activities to remain secret, can the Invisible Government ever be made fully compatible with the democratic system?

The answer is no. It cannot be made fully compatible. But, on the other hand, it seems inescapable that some form of Invisible Government is essential to national security in a time of Cold War. Therefore, the urgent necessity in such a national dilemma is to make the Invisible Government as reconcilable as possible with the democratic system, aware that no more than a tenuous compromise can be achieved.

What, then, is to be done?

Most important, the public, the President and the Congress must support steps to control the intelligence establishment, to place checks on its power and to make it truly accountable, particularly in the area of special operations.

The danger of special operations does not lie in tables of organization or questions of technique, but in embarking upon them too readily and without effective presidential control. Special operations pose dangers not only to the nations against which they are directed, but to ourselves. They raise the question of how far a free society, in attempting to preserve itself, can emulate a closed society without becoming indistinguishable from it.

The moral and practical justification for secret operations has been stated simply by Allen Dulles, who said the government felt compelled to "fight fire with fire." The implication was that the CIA could justifiably respond in kind to the unscrupulous practices of the Soviet espionage machine. It could mirror the opposition.

"Today," Dulles has observed, "the Soviet State Security Service (KGB) is the eyes and ears of the Soviet State abroad as well as at home. It is a multi-purpose, clandestine arm of power that can in the last analysis carry out almost any act that the Soviet leadership assigns to it. It is more than a secret police organization, more than an intelligence and counter-intelligence organization. It is an instrument for subversion, manipulation and violence, for secret intervention in the affairs of other countries. It is an aggressive arm of Soviet ambitions in the Cold War." [2]

A free society has difficulty in adopting such practices because of its moral tradition that the end does not justify the means. It must proceed with caution, alert to the danger of succumbing to the enemy's morality by too eagerly embracing his methods.

Special operations should be launched only after the most sober deliberation by the President, acting upon the broadest possible advice. This counsel should come not only from those within the intelligence community, but from responsible officials with a wider viewpoint. Operations such as those at the Bay of Pigs and in Indonesia involved the potential overthrow of a foreign government. They amount to undeclared war. They should be launched only when the alternative of inaction carries with it the gravest risk to national security.

If, nonetheless, it becomes necessary to undertake a secret operation, it is imperative that the long- range repercussions be weighed fully in advance. The consequences of failure must be faced. Was it worth running the risk of national humiliation in attempting to overthrow Castro? Was it worth running the risk of permanently alienating Sukarno by supporting his enemies?

Equal consideration must be given to the problems that would result from the success of a special operation. Is the United States prepared to assume responsibility for the economic and political conditions growing out of a successful CIA-supported revolt? How much is really accomplished, in such cases as Guatemala and Iran, if a pro-Communist government is removed, but the conditions which permitted Communism to make inroads in the first place are restored?

It is a delusion to think that the problems of United States foreign policy in a complex world can be resolved by the quick surgery of a palace coup. The intelligence and espionage technicians, who have a natural affinity for such activist solutions, should never be allowed to dominate the deliberations leading to secret operations. Nor should they be permitted exclusive control of the conduct of operations in the field.

Both Eisenhower and Kennedy directed that the ambassador be in charge of all United States activities in a foreign country. It is essential that this theoretical supremacy become a reality. An ambassador should never be put in the position of a William Sebald in Burma. If he is to maintain the respect of the government leaders with whom he is dealing, he must be kept informed about American clandestine activity. If circumstances dictate a covert policy that conflicts with the avowed policy of Washington toward a given country, the ambassador must know about it.

Congress should also be kept informed. Under the Constitution, Congress is supposed to act as a check upon the activities of the executive branch. Traditionally, the Senate has given its "advice and consent" to major commitments in the sphere of foreign affairs. But in its relations with the Invisible Government, Congress has all but voted away its rights. It knows relatively little about what goes on in the $4,000,000,000-a-year intelligence complex for which it appropriates the money.

The CIA subcommittees in the House and Senate are controlled by the most conservative elements in Congress, men who are close personally and philosophically to those who run the Invisible Government. These subcommittees are now heavily weighted with legislators whose field of competence is military affairs. They should be reorganized to encompass men with a wider view and expert knowledge of foreign affairs. Men such as Senator Fulbright (who foresaw the perils of the Bay of Pigs with such clarity) should not be purposely excluded from Congressional surveillance of the intelligence apparatus.

The shadowy subcommittees should be replaced by a joint committee, including men from both the House and Senate. There is no reason why secrets should leak in any greater degree from one formal committee than from the present group of informal subcommittees. There has not been any leak of classified data from the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy.

Although the need for greater Congressional control is apparent, both President Eisenhower and President Kennedy resisted it as an infringement upon their executive power. They established a veneer of outside control by creating advisory boards of private citizens. This produced an anomalous situation. Selected private citizens are privy to secrets of the Invisible Government, but the elected representatives of the people are denied any meaningful knowledge of the intelligence machinery.

Congress is not only ignorant of operations overseas, but it has been denied information about the increasing involvement of the Invisible Government in domestic activities. The mandate to gather and analyze intelligence has been broadened into a justification for clandestine activities in the United States.

Clearly, some foreign intelligence can be gathered at home, but no rationale has been offered for a broad spectrum of domestic operations: maintenance of a score of CIA offices in major cities; the control of private businesses serving as CIA covers (such as the Gibraltar Steamship Corporation and Zenith Technical Enterprises, Incorporated); academic programs (such as the Center for International Studies at MIT); and the financing and control of freedom radio stations, publishing ventures and of exile and ethnic groups.

There should be a thorough reappraisal by private organizations and by the universities of the wisdom of their ties to the Invisible Government. There is a real danger that the academic community may find itself so closely allied with the Invisible Government that it will have lost its ability to function as an independent critic of our government and society. The academic world should re-examine its acceptance of hidden money from the CIA.

These unseen domestic activities of the CIA have become disturbingly complex and widespread. To the extent that they can be perceived, they appear to be outside the spirit and perhaps the letter of the National Security Act. No outsider can tell whether this activity is necessary or even legal. No outsider is in a position to determine whether or not, in time, these activities might become an internal danger to a free society. Both Congress and the Executive ought to give urgent attention to this problem.

In a free society attention should be given as well to the increasing tendency of the American Government to mislead the American people in order to protect secret operations. For example:

  • U-2: "There was absolutely no-N-O-no deliberate attempt to violate Soviet airspace. There never has been." -- Lincoln White. State Department spokesman.
     

  • Bay of Pigs: "The American people are entitled to know whether we are intervening in Cuba or intend to do so in the future. The answer to that question is no." -- Secretary of State Dean Rusk.
     

  • Indonesia: "Our policy is one of careful neutrality and proper deportment all the way through so as not to be taking sides where it is none of our business." -- President Eisenhower.
     

  • Missile crisis: "The Pentagon has no information indicating the presence of offensive weapons in Cuba." -- Department of Defense.
     

  • Guatemala: "The situation is being cured by the Guatemalans themselves."-- Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.
     

  • Bay of Pigs fliers: "Unfortunately, at present neither CIA nor any other government agency possesses the slightest pertinent information on your son's disappearance." The White House.

Misleading statements related to covert operations have even distorted the electoral process, as was demonstrated in the presidential campaign of 1960.

It seems reasonable to suggest that there be fewer righteous declarations and less public misinformation by the government and, perhaps, more discreet silence in difficult circumstances.

The secret intelligence machinery of the government can never be totally reconciled with the traditions of a free republic. But in a time of Cold War, the solution lies not in dismantling this machinery but in bringing it under greater control. The resultant danger of exposure is far less than the danger of secret power. If we err as a society, let it be on the side of control.

"It should be remembered," Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1819, "that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also."

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NOTES

1. The Invisible Government
1. Speech by Allen W. Dulles at Yale University, February 3, 1958.

3. Build-Up
1. The entire text of the memorandum was published for the first time in Fulbright of Arkansas, a collection of speeches and papers by Senator J. W. Fulbright. Robert B. Luce, Inc., Washington, 1963.

5. The Case of the Birmingham Widows
1. Interview with Robert F. Kennedy, in U.S. News & World Report, January 28, 1963.

6. A History
1. Article by Harry S. Truman, syndicated by North American Newspaper Alliance, in the Washington Post, December 22, 1963.
2. Memorandum by Allen W. Dulles, contained in Hearings, National Defense Establishment, PP. 525-28; Senate Committee on Armed Services, 80th Congress, 1st Session on S. 758, 1947.
3. New York Times, May 28, 1949.
4. Interview with Allen Dulles, "Meet the Press," National Broadcasting Company, December 31, 1961.
5. New York Herald Tribune, April 16, 1948. See also New York Times of the same date.
6. New York Herald Tribune, June 27, 1950.
7. Truman, Harry S., Memoirs, Vol. II, p. 331. Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York, 1956.
8. Ibid., p. 372.
9. Dulles. Allen W., The Craft of Intelligence, p. 166. Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., New York, 1963.
10. Interview by Eric Sevareid, "CBS Reports: The Hot and Cold Wars of Allen Dulles," Columbia Broadcasting System, April 26, 1962.
11. Dulles, Allen W., The Craft of Intelligence, p. 224. Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., New York, 1963.
12. Hearings, The President's Proposal on the Middle East, p. 446; joint meeting of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and Senate Committee on Armed Services, 85th Congress, 1st Session, February 1, 1957. See also pp. 174-75. January 15, 1957.
13. Dulles, Allen W., "The Craft of Intelligence," article in Britannica Book of the Year, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, 1963.
14. The report cited by Mansfield had appeared in an editorial in the Washington Post, January 9, 1953.
15. Hearings, Events Incident to the Summit Conference, p. 124; Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 86th Congress, 2nd Session, testimony by Secretary of Defense Thomas S. Gates, June 2, 1960.
16. Television interview with Allen Dulles by David Schoenbrun, Columbia Broadcasting System, August 18, 1963.
17. Hearing, Francis G. Powers, U-2 Pilot, Senate Committee on Armed Services, 87th Congress, 2nd Session, March 6, 1962. The interview cited in the footnote was taped by Mr. Clarke on March 12, 1962, during the home-town reception for the U-2 pilot in Pound, Virginia.
18. Statement Concerning Francis Gary Powers, Central Intelligence Agency, March 6, 1962. This document was made public by Representative Carl Vinson, D., Ga., chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services, in advance of Powers' public testimony the same day before the Senate Committee on Armed Services.
19. Dispatch by Walter Sullivan, New York Times, July 23, 1954

10. Vietnam: The Secret War
1. State Department situation paper, April 11, 1963.
2. White House statement, October 2, 1963.
3. Fifth Report, Senate Study Mission, February 24, 1963.

11. Guatemala: CIA's Banana Revolt
1. From a speech to the American Booksellers Association, Washington, D.C., June 10, 1963. The former President later related the incident in the first volume of his presidential memoirs. See Eisenhower, Dwight D., Mandate for Change, Vol. I, The White House Years, PP. 420-27. Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York, 1963.
2. Hearings, Part 13, pp. 865-66; Senate Internal Security Sub. committee, Committee on the Judiciary, 87th Congress, 1st Session, testimony by Whiting Willauer, July 27, 1961.
3. Ydigoras, Miguel y Fuentes, with Mario Rosenthal, My War with Communism, PP. 49-50. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1963.
4. Speech to the nation by John Foster Dulles, June 30, 1954. New York Herald Tribune, July 1, 1954. 382. 1.

12. The Kennedy Shake-Up
1. Interview with Robert F. Kennedy, in U.S. News 6 World Report, January 28, 1963.
2. Interview with Robert F. Kennedy by David Kraslow, in Miami Herald, January 21, 1963.
3. Ibid.
4. Interview with Robert F. Kennedy, in U.S. News 6 World Report, January 28, 1963.

13. The Secret Elite
1. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Hearings on the nomination of John A. McCone, January 18, 1962.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Congressional Record; January 30, 1962.
5. House Subcommittee on Appropriations, testimony by J. Edgar Hoover, January 24, 1962.

15. The Defense Intelligence Agency
1. Dulles, Allen W., The Craft of Intelligence, p. 47. Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., New York, 1963.

16. CIA: "It's Well Hidden"
1. "Issues and Answers," American Broadcasting Company, June 30, 1963.

17. CIA: The Inner Workings
1. Kirkpatrick, Lyman, Military Review, May, 1961.
2. Memorandum by Allen W. Dulles, contained in Hearings, National Defense Establishment, pp. 525-28; Senate Committee on Armed Services, 80th Congress, 1st Session on S. 758, 1947. Television interview with Allen Dulles by David Schoenbrun, Columbia Broadcasting System, August 18, 1963.

18. The Search for Control
1. Dulles, Allen W., The Craft of Intelligence, p. 189. Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., New York, 1963.
2. Intelligence Activities, A Report to the Congress by the Commission on Organization of the Executive Blanch of the Government, June 29, 1955.
3. National Security Organization, A Report to the Congress by the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, January, 1949.
4. Report to President Eisenhower by a special study group, October 19, 1954. The group included William D. Franke, Assistant Secretary of the Navy; Morris Hadley, New York attorney; William D. Pawley, former Ambassador to Brazil.
5. Congressional Record, March 10, 1954.
6. Ibid., April 11, 1956.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., April 9, 1956.
10. Dulles, Allen W., The Craft of Intelligence, p. 261. Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., New York, 1963.
11. Compilation of Studies on United States Foreign Policy, 86th Congress, 2nd Session, prepared under the direction of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.

23. Black Radio
1. Speech by John Richardson, Jr., the president of the Free Europe Committee, to the New York State Publishers Association, Albany, N.Y., January 30, 1963.
2. Dulles, Allen W., The Craft of Intelligence, p. 155. Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., New York, 1963.
3. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 23, 1958.
4. Associated Press dispatch filed by Relman Morin in Cairo, in the Washington Post, August 15, 1958.
5. Broadcast by Miklos Ajtay, by Radio Free Europe to Hungary, November 3, 1956. This is one of several scripts of broadcasts during the Hungarian revolt made available to the authors by RFE.
6. Michener, James A., The Bridge at Andau, p. 257. Random House, Inc., New York, 1957.
7. All of these excerpts are from The Revolt in Hungary, A Documentary Chronology of Events Based Exclusively on Internal Broadcasts by Central and Provincial Radios. Pamphlet published by Free Europe Committee, New York.

24. CIA's Guano Paradise
1. Mrs. Crowell's account, from which this and the following quotations are taken, appeared in the Falmouth Enterprise, July 6, 1962.

25. The 1960 Campaign -- and Now
1. New York Herald Tribune, July 19, 1960.
2. Freedom of Communications, Part Ill, p. 432; The Joint Appearances of Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice-President Richard M. Nixon, Presidential Campaign of 1960, Senate Committee on Commerce, 87th Congress, 1st Session.
3. Freedom of Communications, Part I, p. 515; The Speeches of Senator John F. Kennedy, Presidential Campaign of 1960, Senate Committee on Commerce, 87th Congress, 1st Session.
4. Ibid., p. 681.
5. Nixon, Richard M., Six Crises; PP. 354-55. Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York, 1962.
6. Freedom of Communications, Part I, pp. 710-11; The Speeches of Vice-President Richard M. Nixon, Presidentia1 Campaign of 1960, Senate Committee on Commerce, 87th Congress, 1st session.
7. Both the Salinger and Dulles quotes are from the New York Herald Tribune, March 21, 1962.
8. New York Herald Tribune, March 25, 1962.

26. A Conclusion
1. Article by Harry S. Truman, syndicated by North American Newspaper Alliance, in the Washington Post, December 22, 1963.
2. Dulles, Allen W., The Craft of Intelligence, p. 86. Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., New York, 1963.

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